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Dessert

Cocoanut and Rice Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from rice, milk, eggs, sugar, and grated coconut, topped with a meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cocoanut and Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Simmer the rice in milk until very soft.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Beat the eggs, reserving 2 whites, and mix in the sugar and grated coconut.

  4. Stir in the cooled rice and milk mixture.

  5. Bake in the oven until the custard forms; do not wait for it to set.

Top with meringue

  1. Make a meringue with the reserved egg whites and powdered sugar, beating until stiff.

  2. Spread the meringue on top of the pudding and return to the oven for 2 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rice
Softens into a thick body that gives the pudding its bulk and creamy texture.
Milk
Provides liquid that cooks with the rice and sets with the eggs into a custard.
Eggs
Coagulate on baking to set the custard and give the pudding structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps tenderize the custard.
Grated coconut
Adds moisture, fat and a distinct coconut aroma and flavour.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Baking the custard. The custard should be removed while still slightly soft, because eggs keep setting from residual heat and can turn grainy or rubbery if overbaked.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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